How to Publish a Book Excerpt or Op-ed on Medium
Pre-publication, post-publication, or just because
Medium is a great way to bring visibility to your book, whether with an excerpt or original piece. We always want to be sharing quality work, so you can publish whenever you like — timed with publication or after the fact. Here’s how to get started.
First, sign in to your Medium account
The author should create a Medium account using their personal Twitter or Facebook credentials. By signing in, an author is able to receive responses and interact with readers.
If the author does not want or is unable to publish directly, the publisher may post an excerpt on his or her behalf. Use the company’s Twitter or Facebook credentials to sign in to Medium. Just be sure to include a byline in the text, so the author’s name is prominent.
Next, create a new post
Click the “Write a story” button at the top right of the homepage to open a blank draft. Or, click “Write here…” at the top center of the homepage to begin.
Insert and format your excerpt
Add a title (and subtitle, if you’d like) first, then ENTER down a line to paste the text of the excerpt you want to include.
Create a title that introduces the excerpt itself, not the title of the book (don’t worry, there is ample opportunity to feature the book title in a robust footer). HERE is an example.
If there is more to be said than can fit in a title or subtitle, you may want to briefly introduce the book in italics, to set it apart from the book text. HERE is an example.
Format the title (and subtitle) by highlighting the text and using the [H1] and [H2] options.
Add images
To add an image anywhere in the body of the text, ENTER after the line where you’d like to put the image, click [+] and then [camera], and open an image from your drive. You will have the same formatting and caption options as for your top image.
NOTE: Try to find a different image besides the book’s cover art (Flickr’s Creative Commons is a great resource) if you are adding something interstitially. Like the title, the cover is best saved for the footer.
Pull quotes
Pull quotes are a great way to put emphasis on specific sections of text. Make a sentence or two its own free-standing paragraph, then highlight it with your cursor. The formatting options that appear will include a [“] icon.
Clicking the icon once makes your quote look like this.
Clicking the icon twice makes it look like this.
Add a promotional footer
At the end of the excerpt, add a footer with information regarding book purchase and publication.
ENTER down one line from the last line of your text and select the [—] option from the [+] list to add a break line.
ENTER again and select the [camera] option to insert a photo of the book’s cover art. JPEGS work best. Choose the first photo formatting option, which moves the image to the far left. For the adjacent text, include whatever information you’d like, including links to purchase and copyright details.
Like this:
You may also make the book jacket a linkable image. In addition to the footer links, one click on the jacket would take you directly to a vendor.
Publish!
Click the [<] icon at the top right of the page to open the sidebar, and then click PUBLISH.
If you have any questions or want to send a link when your post is live, feel free to email kate@medium.com.
